


Ransom in a Voice

by kvikindi



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Adventures in Faerie, Gen, Muteness, Nightmares, Pillar of Darkness, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-14 15:38:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4570026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kvikindi/pseuds/kvikindi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Jonathan Strange loses his voice while in Faerie, and complications ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in response to a prompt at the meme.
> 
> Title from Emily Dickinson.

The great difficulty in travelling through Faerie, Mr Norrell had discovered, was that the place was full of fairies. Oh, Faerie itself was nice enough— it was not like travelling abroad, where Mr Norrell was given to understand that one might become a good deal sunburned, or to the seaside, which smelt of fish and made him queasy, or Ireland, where Englishmen were shot or had their offices set ablaze, or Scotland, where a third cousin of his had once been robbed by a vagrant. Whether Faerie were sunny or dark did not really matter, as he was entrapped within Eternal Darkness either way, and pistols did not operate there, and it did not appear to have such a thing as fish. It had its own weather, which was principally magical in nature, and which — though it generated a certain amount of inconvenience1— had no physical aspect, and was so interesting to Mr Norrell on theoretical grounds that he forgave its intrusion. Faerie had a pleasant temperature, and was often quite empty of people. Mr Norrell could also enjoy Faerie from the comfort of his home, which is to say that most of his observations on the topic had been made from a distance, ideally from the distance of his upstairs window at Hurtfew Abbey.

However, it was simply impossible to travel for any distance without falling under the notice of some fairy or another. They were all identically unpleasant, identically wicked, identically self-regarding, and not one of them could be trusted in the least. Mr Norrell thought it was a grave injustice that they should have been given such a lovely country, and he was inclined to consider it a personal offense if he was expected to consort with them in any arena.

It fell, therefore, to Mr Strange to engage in the sorts of diplomacy that gentlemen must engage in if they are traversing a large area of land which does not belong to them whilst imprisoned eternally in a Pillar of Darkness that includes two London townhouses and a large conglomeration of libraries.2 Mr Norrell had developed quite a cunning spell that let Mr Strange go wherever he pleased, and that sent the houses floating after him in the Darkness, not unlike a little bird on a leash. As long as Mr Strange did not walk too quickly, there wold be no ill-effects on his part; and as for Mr Norrell, so long as he did not look out of the window (for he had discovered that looking out of the window while the library was moving was something else that made him queasy) he too was perfectly content. In this manner, Mr Strange was able to purchase food, speak with fairies, investigate various magio-geographical oddities, and once— notably— negotiate with a large and determined raincloud that had very much wished to travel with them.3 All without requiring Mr Norrell to leave his library!

For the most part, this caused very few problems. After all, Mr Strange was charming and lively and had a gift for languages. He seemed to enjoy poking around, and he always returned to the houses with a number of remarkable treasures— cakes made by Russian princesses from the almonds of heartache, and frosted with all their unspoken desires; flowers that turned into geese when they blossomed and waddled away; and a coat that let you dream the dreams of whoever you liked while you wore it. Mr Norrell had little interest in any of these treasures, but he was glad to see that they delighted Mr Strange.

So it was a great surprize to see Mr Strange come back inside on this occasion looking as though he had worked himself into a rage.

Mr Norrell looking up in surprise at the force with which the library doors swung open. Mr Strange was ordinarily much more careful— after a number of lectures concerning loud noises, and the extent to which Mr Norrell did not like them, and the numerous ways in which they contributed to his nervous strain, which Mr Strange anyways contributed to a great deal already, he had cause to be— and upon close examination, he appeared to be seething. Mr Norrell did not think he had ever seen a man seethe. He had thought it was something pots did when you did not watch them.

During their time in Faerie, Mr Strange had grown a bit wilder-looking. He had begun, once restored to health, looking rather fashionable, but in the manner of absent-minded men he forgot to eat at times, which left him looking a little thin, and he could not ever remember to cut his hair, so he was forever pushing a tangle of curls out of his eyes and then growing irritable about it. He had also adopted the habit of going about in a long sort of dressing gown, which he said he had done in Italy, and they had not minded it in Italy, so he could not see why anyone should mind it now, and if Mr Norrell wished to quarrel with him about his apparel, he could think of at least a half-dozen things about which he wished to quarrel with Mr Norrell, so perhaps each might be better to leave the other in peace.

On this particular day, he seemed even wilder than usual. He stormed across the floor, his black sleeves trailing. Mr Norrell, regarding him apprehensively through his spectacles, found that he looked rather like a child in the midst of a tantrum. Somewhat regrettably, Strange always had a childish aspect when angry. It was the curls that caused it, Mr Norrell considered; that, and he had a tendency to stamp his feet.

"My word," said Mr Norrell. "Whatever has happened? You have no bread. Did you not find any bread? I told you we needed bread for breakfast. I cannot tolerate the bread you make by magic; I have told you—"

Mr Strange hurled a loaf of bread at Mr Norrell's head. Mr Norrell did not see where he had produced it from. He was too busy ducking.

When he had recovered the bread, Mr Strange was gone. Mr Norrell could hear a distant thumping sound that spoke of him throwing further objects about in his house upstairs.

"Well," said Mr Norrell, "it is just as well he did not stay in the library. I certainly would not have tolerated him throwing my books!"

Mr Norrell often spoke aloud in this manner, when no one except himself was in the room. He had grown very used to Childermass being somewhere within earshot, either standing over his shoulder or lurking elsewhere in the room, and had still not wholly adjusted to his absence.

The noises continued for a very long while, and only seemed to grow more violent. Mr Norrell felt, at one point, a great surge of magic that brought him halfway to his feet; then another that made him feel cold all over. It was unusual for him to perceive magic in Faerie. The whole realm was so magical in its basic composition that it took very strong magic indeed to form shapes, as it were, that stood out from this backdrop. Why Mr Strange should be performing such strong magic— and without conversing first with Mr Norrell, which made him feel very peculiar and unpleasant indeed— was a mystery. However, the magic ceased quite soon, and eventually so did the sounds of objects hitting walls, and so Mr Norrell considered the episode, such as it was, to be over.

As both men were very prone to absorption in their researches, it was not unusual for Mr Norrell to go a day or two without encountering Mr Strange. He did not consider it too curious when this proved to be the case, and he did not pay the topic of Mr Strange very much attention. However, by the end of the second day, he was beginning to feel the lack of an audience. He had several times made remarks to a Mr Strange who was not there, and waited for a response from the absent Mr Strange. He had twice eaten breakfast alone, which had given him indigestion, as he was used to eating breakfast with Mr Strange, and— as we have mentioned— Mr Norrell did not care for changes in his domestic arrangements. He reflected that it was very poor manners for Mr Strange to behave so. He thought that Mr Strange was well aware of his indigestion, and had inflicted it on purpose, in order to punish Mr Norrell for some obscure and possibly imaginary slight of which Mr Norrell was not yet aware.4 Mr Norrell judged this to be intolerable behavior, and he decided to put an end to it.

It was with this in mind that he ascended to Mr Strange's Soho-square house and, after a moment's indecision, knocked on Mr Strange's bedroom door.

For the length of a silence that Mr Norrell interpreted as sullen, there was no answer from Mr Strange.

Mr Norrell knocked again.

There was the unmistakable sound of a book hitting the door.

Mr Norrell considered himself to be a man capable of enduring great suffering in silence. Indeed, he felt he was a man who had already done so, and he would have been much surprised to hear any contradiction. Yet Mr Norrell felt that there are some indignities which must not be allowed to go unpunished— some pain that must not be endured— and into this category fell the abuse of books.

"I beg your pardon, sir!" he said very sharply. "I am not so absent-minded yet, nor so enchanted by our present surroundings, that I cannot perceive that you are tossing books about! I will not stand for it, sir! I tell you, I will not stand for it!"

He had rather thought he might have to break the door down, and he was eyeing it uncertainly, not sure how to go about this, when Strange slipped a torn bit of paper under the door. He had scribbled a note on it in his atrocious handwriting.

Mr Norrell picked it up and read:

_Sir_

_I am V. much afraid I have lost the power of speech._ [A great deal of writing was angrily crossed out here.] A _fairy has taken it. Remain hopeful of some magical solution. I have tried several incantations, none effective. I welcome yr input & consideration._

_As ever J.S._

"This does not account for the damage to your books," said Mr Norrell. A horrible thought occurred to him. "I do hope they are your own books, and not from the Hurtfew library. Mr Strange— Mr Strange, surely you would not do such violence to another man's books?"

There was no reply.

Mr Norrell rubbed his head, sighing. "You will do yourself no good by continuing in this manner, Mr Strange. And I fear you may do yourself some harm. Come down and have a cup of tea, and I will make some explorations."

Mr Strange remained silent. Well, perhaps it was natural that he would remain silent, seeing as how he had no voice. Mr Norrell wondered how extensive the loss was. Could he still make any type of noise? Was it the organs of breath that were affected? Was it the tongue, or the mouth? There had been a case in the 13th century of several young women whose words were being stolen by a sorcerer... 5 Now that his curiosity had been awakened, Mr Norrell found that he had a great many questions and— both unfortunately and unusually— they were not the sort of questions that he could answer by delving in his books. Mr Strange was the book he would need.

"Mr Strange?" he said again. "I hope you do not think I will leave, sir."

At last Mr Strange opened the door. He looked very dirty and very bad-tempered. Mr Norrell was of the opinion that he had not slept. He had that sulky turn to his lips that was notably characteristic of Mr Strange's mouth when he had not slept. He made an impatient gesture, as though to say, _Well, see: you have what you wanted._

Mr Norrell saw he was barefoot. He saw the way that Strange's shoulders hunched in a defensive posture, and the redness to his eyes that spoke of bitter frustration. Most of what was in the room had been torn apart, or else bore the marks of magic gone explosively awry. The air smelled of spilt ink and sulphur and smoke.

"Come, sir," Mr Norrell said. "Let me make you some tea."

Strange grudgingly trailed him down the stair-steps. Mr Norrell supposed he should account it a victory.

* * *

Strange, it transpired, had been wandering along a fairy river— Strange believed that it was a tributary of one of the Rivers of Death, which occasioned a protracted and fiercely scribbled argument on the subject before he could continue to relate the story at hand— when he came across a bridge stretching over the river. A melancholy woman had been standing upon it.

"How did you know she was melancholy?" Mr Norrell asked.

Strange made a curt hand gesture.

"It might be important information!"

Strange glared, and wrote: _She was moaning and weeping._

Mr Norrell frowned. "Do women really do that?"

At any rate— a melancholy woman had been standing upon it. Strange had approached her and asked her the nature of her trouble.

Mr Norrell said, "You shouldn't have done that. Have I not told you, it is no use playing the gentleman with such creatures. I am certain I have told you that; and approaching her! Well! Certainly you have learned your lesson, at least I hope you have learned your lesson!"

Mr Strange's hand was clenched very tightly around the pen. He continued writing: the lady had told that she was the spirit with governance over that river. (This was not unusual for Faerie, where a single fairy, spirit, or other sort of creature might consider itself to have a privileged relationship over a lake, a road, or a single tree.) However, long ago, when John Uskglass had been king in Northern England, she had once been human, and she longed to be human again. What prevented her? Well, she had lost her soul to the river, which was why she was trapped here, now, condemned to guard it day and night. How could she get it back? A kiss from a human man would restore it.

"Stupid," said Mr Norrell. "Oh, stupid, stupid."

Mr Strange threw the pen at him. Ink splattered across the page, and across Mr Norrell's waistcoat. Strange stood and paced the room, running his hands through his hair. He looked as though he would have quite liked to throw something heavier. Mr Norrell understood that he would have to be appeased. He had come to understand that this was sometimes true of men who were not Childermass, though admittedly the knowledge had come slowly.

"I beg your pardon," said Mr Norrell. "I ought not to have interrupted you. Please, continue your story."

Mr Strange glared again. Glare was an insufficient descriptor for the act that Mr Strange was engaged in; this glare was nothing like the glare before. It was a great deal furiouser. Mr Norrell flinched under it. But Mr Strange sat down once more and took the pen from Mr Norrell.

Mr Strange had explained to the river spirit that he was married, and that he ought to kiss no woman but his wife, but this only made the river spirit grow more despairing. It had been three hundred years, she said, since she saw a human man in Faerie. What if he was the only one? She would go on for three hundred more years in this state! She would never see the green hills of England again! How she longed once more to see the sun and those green hills. Where in England had she come from? Oh, it was so long ago. She remembered rivers. So many rivers sleeping in their valleys. They used to watch the knights come riding in, all gleaming like glass and carrying their banners. Not like fairy knights, who were so grim; not like the cold still rivers of Faerie. How she longed to go home to England!

"So you kissed her," said Mr Norrell. His tone conveyed his disapproval— his weariness that he had not taught Mr Strange better than that. He shook his head.

Strange looked murderous. Yes, he had kissed her. And the instant he kissed her, she changed shape entirely, and became a pale-skinned creature in a coat made of seashells who locked her long hands in his hair and sucked all of the breath out of him. And when she let him go, she laughed, and called him a fool, and told him she had lived there for four thousand years,6 and that for all that time, she fed on men's voices. And then she disappeared.

"And you have not spoken since then."

Strange shook his head.

"Can you make any other sound? Can you scream or cough?"

Strange tried. He screwed up his face with effort. But he could not make any kind of sound. It was rather eerie to observe all the signature motions of sound, without any sound coming out of him It was as though he were trapped inside an unseen cage, from which nothing could escape. He seemed to realize it. He had a look of panic.

"I'm sure it will be all right," said Mr Norrell uncomfortably. He was not well-prepared to deal with a panicked Mr Strange. His own destiny was to be fearful; Mr Strange's was— well, Mr Norrell had seen Mr Strange mad with grief, furious, dangerous, half-destroyed, and dying. He did not think, however, that he had ever seen Mr Strange panic. "We will find a solution," he added, and when this did not seem to diminish the panic, he reached out very awkwardly and laid his hand upon Mr Strange's shoulder.

 _How,_ Mr Strange mouthed very clearly.

"I do not know yet." You are not supposed to ask _how_ , thought Mr Norrell irritably. For it was clear to him that it would be extraordinarily difficult to get Mr Strange's voice back. They would have to find the river, and the lady, and work out what sort of lady she was, and whether the bargain that Mr Strange had made had been at all licit, since it had been so deceptive. And perhaps she could not give the voice back, even if they caught her. Perhaps it no longer existed. But: "Surely we can manage quite well," he said in a effortfully light tone. "It will not stop you doing magic! See, here, how we are almost conversing!"

Mr Strange threw the pen at him a second time.

It had been quite a good waistcoat that he was wearing, Mr Norrell thought mournfully, later, examining the ink stains.

* * *

But Mr Norrell's prediction proved surprizingly accurate. He and Mr Strange did manage extremely well. Upon awaking the next morning Mr Norrell padded down to breakfast in his carpet slippers to find that Mr Strange eating toast and enjoying tea. He had already laid a place setting for Mr Norrell. Mr Norrell considered that it was in the nature of an apology.

There was, over breakfast, an uncomfortable silence until Mr Norrell— casting about for some topic— recalled that he had had a most curious dream, one that Mr Strange would certainly find interesting. He began to recount it, very relieved. "... and I realized that there were two Francis Pevenseys, a brother and a sister, both with the very same name, and that Dr Pale had tutored the brother in magic while conducting a love affair with the sister. I was most relieved. How disappointing it was upon waking to pause and discover that nothing of the sort could be the case, unless the circumstances were quite unusual. Nevertheless I have long thought that some mystery still surrounds the identity of Francis Pevensey, for surely Dr Pale would not conduct himself so in regards to a lady. I wonder if you have read Oliver Worimsley's epigraph on the matter. Worimsley postulates the existence of a mystical sect to which both Pale and Pevensey may have belonged; their letters therefore make reference to a spiritual love only, albeit using the language of physical love. Of course, Worimsley is—"

Mr Strange's countenance had become rather thunderous. He seemed to cast about for some convenient method of expression before seizing his half-filled cup of tea and spilling it onto the table-top. He used his fingertip to sketch, atop the milky liquid, slashes of light that spelt out the word: _WRONG._

"You have wasted that tea," said Mr Norrell, disapproving. "And you have made a mess of the table. It is such a trial to obtain good tea in Faerie.7 I wonder that you should use it so profligately. Perhaps you could limit yourself to paper and pen in future."

To which Mr Strange responded by pulling a horrible face.

"That is childish of you," Mr Norrell informed him. "You are behaving as a child."

He half-expected Mr Strange to pull a more horrible face still, and perhaps stalk out to sulk in another room. However, Mr Strange did neither of these things. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest in a pose of displeasure and shrugged pointedly at Mr Norrell. After a few moments of heavy and irritated silence, he stood and fetched a cloth to clean the spilt tea.

* * *

There was no way to avoid the necessity of leaving the house and traveling to the river where Mr Strange had been tricked. Having accepted this, Mr Norrell prepared for the journey with the greatest trepidation. He filled the pockets of his coat with all manner of objects he imagined he might require, including several small notebooks, a pen and ink, a packet of biscuits, his spectacles, three handkerchiefs, his second-best copy of Ormskirk's _Revelations of Thirty-six Other Worlds_ , several small candles, and, upon second thought, two more handkerchiefs. He was afraid that it might be very dirty by the river. Faerie was not, as a rule, terribly dirty— certainly not as dirty as London, which raised it in his estimation— but he could not help but suspect that this was simply because he had not arrived at the dirty parts of it yet.

Mr Strange was regarding him with a look of amusement. Mr Norrell did not appreciate it. He felt faintly stung.

"I know we are not going so very far," he said, answering what he felt was the unspoken chastisement. "But one never knows what one may encounter when leaving home. Surely it is best to be prepared. I dare say if you had been a bit better prepared yourself, we might not now find ourselves in our present difficulties!"

This put an end to Mr Strange's look of amusement, but Mr Norrell did not feel very triumphant about it. While he was convinced he had been justified in his reprimand, he found himself distressed by its effect on Mr Strange, who did not appear so much humbly repentant— which had been Mr Norrell's intent— than drawn, and tired, and rather unhappy.

The fairy wood in which their unusual home was resting did not seem to find Eternal Darkness any impediment to the usual way of life of a wood. It was filled with the noise of little animals and insects, and rustling noises which cause Mr Norrell to think— with a shudder— of mice. The trees appeared very like the trees of England, except that very occasionally Mr Norrell would realize that what he had taken for a tree limb was a skeletal arm, sometimes half again the size of the arm of a man, growing quite naturally out of a tree-trunk. At other times, he thought he saw eyes in the darkness, only to inspect them more closely and find that they were flowers, glinting wetly as animal's eyes did, glowing eerily with their own light. He came to feel that he did not like the wood all that much.

At last they came to the bank of a wide gleaming river.

Mr Norrell said, "I thought you said there was a bridge."

There was no bridge. There was only the river, running black in the Darkness. It looked shallow, but likely this was an illusion. Mr Norrell would not have cared to step into it. It made an odd sound, as well, not the continuous hushing that water over rocks and sand and earth made. This sound had a certain sing-song aspect. It sounded like a child's voice reciting a counting rhyme, but there were no words, and no humanness to the voice— only the hiss and splash of water on water.

Mr Strange made a gesture that Mr Norrell could not interpret. He pointed at the river, perhaps as though to say: _There was a bridge._

"Well," said Mr Norrell, "if I understand you correctly, I suppose that it hardly stretches belief."

He stepped forward to the edge of the water and cleared his throat loudly. "Madam," he addressed the river. "Er— if "madam" is the correct title. I am afraid I require your assistance for a moment, if— that is— perhaps you would be so good as to... favour us with your presence?" He could not help the sentence ending more meekly than he had intended. He felt oppressed by the wildness of the place, which was uncomfortable and and did not seem amenable to reason.

After a moment, a tall wave slopped over his feet, sending water trickling down into his shoes. The river made a noise like high cold laughter. Mr Norrell could feel Mr Strange flinch.

"That is most impolite of you," Mr Norrell said more severely. "I wish only to discuss the terms of your arrangement with my apprentice."

The word _apprentice_ caused Mr Strange to make an outraged expression. Mr Norrell direct a warning look at him.

"There are rules," he continued, "rules that govern this sort of thing, madam. I am certain you do not wish me to appeal to a higher authority."

The river made an indifferent sound at him, a sort of sighing, rushing exhale of boredom. Though Mr Norrell waited, he could not discern any further message.

He turned to Mr Strange. "I shall try to call the spirit up, if we are agreed?"

Mr Strange nodded his head emphatically, as though to indicate that he would have already done so, had he possessed the requisite capacity for speech.

The spell that Mr Norrell used was not a summoning spell but rather a spell of revelation, meant to reveal its subjects hidden dimensions. He thought that surely an avatar must be termed a hidden dimension, and after the unpredictable effects that he and Mr Strange had experienced with their last spell of summoning, he was reluctant to embark on such an effort again.

He took his spectacles from his pocket and perched them on his nose. Then he opened one of his little notebooks and began to read. The spell that he used was a refinement by Mr Strange of a fragment recorded by Thomas Lanchester in his _Language of Birds_. Unlike the spell of revelation attributed to the Master of Doncaster, which was of particular use in glimpsing the hidden qualities of objects, or that of Ormskirk, which was meant for the piercing of magical illusions, that of Lanchester was intended to reveal the hidden qualities of persons. Mr Norrell reasoned that it would be quite as useful for fairy spirits.

He waited upon uttering it. The world seemed to grow quiet. Then there came a great rushing of wind; indeed an avalanche of wind, turning stronger and stronger, with a smell of drowned flesh and underwater moss and bitterness. Mr Norrell gagged. He could not remember smelling any odour so unpleasant.

A person— or something in the shape of a person— hung over the river. Its face was transparent, and there was a large black hole where its mouth should have been. It did not look anything like a melancholy woman. Its hair writhed in grey tendrils like eels through the air, and its fingertips were somewhere between bones and claws.

The noise died down. But it was replaced by a sound that was far more eerie: a cacophony of voices, all speaking over one another, babbling in frantic tones that seemed to plead. They thinned out gradually, dying into silence, till at last one voice was left speaking.

It was Strange's voice. It came from the mouth of the figure, and it had an echoing, dead quality to it. "He gave it to me. No one forced him to do it. There will be no appeal, magician."

"He gave you a kiss," argued Norrell. "Nothing more. You had no right to take his voice from him."

There was a silence. The figure said, in Strange's eerie, dead voice, "He smelled of magic and England, of blood and heartsickness. He should not have come here, smelling so... edible. No one in the Twelve Lower Hundreds8 would fault me for it. I could have taken a great deal more from him, had I wished to. I could have traded his heart and his nightmares and the bones of his fingers. I could have traded every curl of his hair. Do you think there is no profit to be made from an English magician? I was merciful."

It coiled one of its claw-like fingers. Beside Mr Norrell, Mr Strange lurched heavily forwards, falling to his knees at river's edge. His face had gone white. One of his hands clasped at his cravat, as though trying to tear it away from his neck.

"Stop it!" Mr Norrell rifled the pages of his notebook, searching for a spell that might have the desired effect.

"Would you not prefer him without a heart?" the river-spirit mused. "I could replace it with amber. You could keep the rest of him. Or glass, if you wish, or coal, or crystal. It has been done before."

"I do not wish any of those things!"

"Then you will go," said the river-spirit in Strange's bored, disdainful tones, just as Mr Norrell, in a moment of panic, shouted the words that would bring Lanchester's revelation to an end.

Quiet collapsed in upon them. Mr Norrell squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, very apprehensive. When he opened them again, very gingerly, Mr Strange was lying facedown on the riverbank.

"Oh, no," said Mr Norrell. "No, no—" He did not feel quite able to check if Mr Strange still had his heart. In fact he was paralyzed, sick to his stomach with dread. But surely— it was not in the nature of fairy contracts— it could not be at all legitimate— and perhaps, after all, it had only been meant as a threat?

Mr Strange rolled over, wincing, and sat up slowly, holding an unsteady hand to his head.

"Mr Strange!" cried Mr Norrell. "Oh, you have been very foolish! I cannot overstate how foolish you have been!"

Mr Strange looked as though this was not quite what he had hoped to hear upon regaining consciousness.

"To tangle with such a creature! You see why I issue such warnings about dealing with fairies! It is always so very dangerous!"

Mr Strange glanced pointedly at the river, and then at Mr Norrell. Mr Norrell had the uncomfortable feeling that had he been able to speak, he might have drawn attention to the fact that Mr Norrell had, in fact, practically summoned this particular spirit. Mr Norrell thought this was most unfair, as the root cause of their troubles was inarguably Mr Strange's foolishness, and he might have delivered himself of several more cutting observations on this topic had he not felt so tired and primarily relieved that Mr Strange was still possessed of his heart and his curls and the bones of his fingers, and all of his other parts, barring his voice.

"Come, sir," Mr Norrell said. "Let us return to the library. Perhaps we may find a solution there. At the very least, we will be a great deal cleaner." For Mr Strange was all over mud and river water. Mr Norrell might have offered him a hand had he not been quite so thoroughly covered in dirt. He felt almost certain that Mr Strange, climbing haltingly to his feet, understood this sentiment.

"You do," Mr Norrell ventured, as Mr Strange steadied himself against a tree-trunk, "—you do still have a..." He trailed off, gesturing to Mr Strange's heart, for he had realized that he did not know, in fact, how a person without a heart might act or look. He had assumed that Mr Strange still had his heart, but what would he look like with a heart of coal, or any of the other horrible things that the spirit had suggested?

Mr Strange shrugged his shoulders and nodded. He looked rather defeated.

"... Good," said Mr Norrell. "I am glad." He thought he ought to say something more to if he wished to express sufficiently to Mr Strange the sincerity with which he was glad, but he did not know what more to say. The silence deepened.

"I only said you were my apprentice," he said at last, "because it would be more correct, in that case. My speaking for you. That is, my speaking on your behalf. If I were responsible for you. That is, if I had a stake in your well-being. If there were a reason that I— That is—" He stopped, frustrated. "It is no matter," he said. "Only it seemed correct, at that moment."

He turned towards the path that would lead them back to Hurtfew. It seemed to him that he did not know what he had meant; only that he had wished to communicate that he would not allow Mr Strange to be harmed, that Mr Strange was his to protect. He thought he could not communicate this without sounding very stupid, for certainly he had done a great deal to Mr Strange that might be termed "harmful." It would hardly do now to insist that he wished to protect Mr Strange. But nevertheless, that had been his sentiment— certainly at the thought of losing Mr Strange entirely.

Perhaps halfway through the fairy wood, he glanced over his shoulder and saw that Mr Strange lagged. He was moving heavily and slowly, as though half-asleep, tripping over every second root he encountered.

"This will not do," Mr Norrell said. "Mr Strange, you are slowing our progress considerably. You must give me your arm. If you fall asleep here, what do you imagine will happen then? You will get yourself into all manner of trouble, and it will fall to me to rescue you! That would be most inconvenient for me, sir. No, I would not welcome it at all. I should be very cross with you if such a thing occurred."

As he spoke, he had got Mr Strange's arm slung over his shoulder. Together, they moved along the eerie little path like one limping, awkward, hybrid creature. The forest chirped around them, and the little eyes that were not eyes glittered in the shadows, and bones swayed gently in the wind, and Mr Norrell could feel Mr Strange's heart beat against his shoulder: tired and untidy and human.

 

 

* * *

 

1Weather in Faerie, Mr Strange and Mr Norrell had discovered, comprised a number of phenomena, among them storms of bad dreams, compulsions of building, a kind of magical itch that could only be relieved by casting enchantments, episodes of overwhelming reverie, a prickling sensation that gave Mr Strange the most dreadful headaches, and at least seventeen different types of rain. (Norrell and Strange had witnessed six of these rains and encountered references to the others. The six that they had encountered were: a rain of terror, a rain of virgin teardrops, a rain of small white flowers which gave off a sour scent, a rain of eggshells, a rain of heartbreak, and a rain of a weightless, sea-foam substance that collected in drifts and made both men giggle for hours.)

2 The formal arrangement of the geography of the Pillar of Darkness was a matter of some ongoing dispute. Mr Norrell would have strongly preferred for Mr Strange's Ashfair library to occupy the main floor of the pillar, with the library of Hurtfew on the floor above that, for he considered his own library to be significantly more worthwhile than Mr Strange's, and the higher floor to be a superior defensive position should some villain wish to steal or destroy the books. Above this library (and accessible via a magical staircase) would be located his own London house, so that he could access it more easily. Mr Strange's own house (again accessible via staircase) could take up the position above. Mr Norrell acknowledged that it was inconvenient for him to have to put up with Mr Strange tramping up and down through his home and library, but he was willing to suffer such an indignity and disturbance for the present. He was sure that Mr Strange could learn to lower the volume of his footsteps if given sufficient encouragement.

Mr Strange did not find this arrangement amenable, and often Mr Norrell would find all the rooms of the houses jumbled together when Strange was in a mood of particular annoyance. Strange claimed that this was due to a loss of concentration— his spell being the one that kept the houses affixed— but as Mr Norrell had a great and special dislike of changes to his domestic arrangements, as Strange well knew, Mr Norrell suspected the act to be an intentional one. 

3 "Why is there a raincloud in Faerie," wondered Norrell, "when there is none of the usual sort of rainfall?" To which Strange said he did not know, and he was very tired, because the language of rainclouds was a difficult one, and speaking it made him feel light-headed and grey.

4 None of rationale and acts that Mr Norrell describes was at all characteristic of Mr Strange. Indeed, they were a great deal more typical of Mr Norrell's own behavior.

5 Mr Norrell refers to the case of the "Lincolnshire Elizabeths," three girls named Elizabeth who lived along the bank of the Humber. In 1274, they were enchanted by a man named John Gowtright. When they spoke, no sound came out of their mouths. It was assumed by all that they had been struck mute. In reality, John Gowtright had collected their words into a little blown-glass sphere, which he intended to use for an act of black magic that requires secret utterances from a virgin's lips. Gowtright was apprehended, and his glass sphere smashed, and it is said that afterwards, for almost two centuries, one could go to a certain promontory along the Humber and hear the voices of the three girls, speaking as naturally as though they were still there.

6 As has been noted elsewhere, fairies have a curious tendency to refer to any very long period of time as "four thousand years." It is unlikely that the lady in question was being specific.

7 Several weeks after their supply of tea had been exhausted— an unhappy state of affairs that had considerably heightened tensions in the Darkness— Mr Strange had, accidentally, or so he claimed, relocated Hurtfew Abbey to one of the remoter deserts of Hell after a particularly long lecture from Mr Norrell regarding the necessity of washing one's hands before handling books. (Mr Strange had the regrettable habit of leaving charcoal, ink, and chalk thumbprints on pages, which could never then be quite cleaned away.) Following the retrieval of Hurtfew from the Hellish desert, Mr Strange had bartered for the acquisition of several pounds of tea with an East India Company captain whose ship had appeared in Faerie after foundering off the coast of Pondicherry in late 1795. 

8 The particular area of Faerie in which Mr Strange and Mr Norrell were travelling was divided into plots of land known as "hundreds." It is unclear whether this concept was adopted by Faerie from England, or whether the opposite is the case. This region of Faerie (which was simply referred to as West-of-the-King's-Kingdom) contained Twelve Lower Hundreds and Thirty-Two Higher Hundreds.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Mr Strange had fallen straight to sleep upon returning from the river, and Mr Norrell resigned himself to the unhappy likelihood that Strange would not appear at breakfast the next day. It was to his great surprize, therefore, that he entered the breakfast room come morning to find it already occupied. A pot of tea steamed atop the little table; a rack of toast sat beside a jar of marmalade, and Strange was absently squinting down at a book.

"Well, Mr Strange," said Mr Norrell, "I perceive your spirits have greatly improved."

Mr Strange very grudgingly lifted one shoulder in a shrug. He gestured towards the pot of tea, then lifted the book he had been reading and pointed to the spine. Its worn gold lettering proclaimed it to be _De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Alterorum, or, Some Reflections Upon the Laws and Custom of The Fairies, Taken from Conversations With Col Tom Blue._

Mr Norrell frowned. "It is not a very reliable volume. Such reflections as they are may be third- or fourth-hand, and the author was not, whatever is claimed, the Earl of Oxford."

Strange fixed upon him a level stare which seemed to enquire as to whether Mr Norrell had any superior suggestion.

Mr Norrell admitted, "Very little has been written concerning the laws of Faerie. Though— I believe I may have an incomplete manuscript by Tabraham9 which purports to be a reckoning of all the greater and lesser principalities of the Other Lands. It is quite out of date by Christian standards, having been abandoned in in or around the year 1213; however, as fairies consider time, this would make it a modern document still. It might provide us with an idea of where an appeal may be directed."

Mr Strange indicated that he thought this an excellent idea, and then, via an arched eyebrow and a very eloquent expression, that he wondered why Mr Norrell had neglected to ever previously mention this document.

"I am not interested in fairies. It had not crossed my mind," said Mr Norrell, who had in fact carefully removed the document from the Hurtfew library (along with a number of others) when it became clear that he would remain trapped with Strange in the darkness. The items in question were now carefully stored in a lined trunk that lay below his bedroom window. There was no particular reason for Mr Norrell to have removed these texts from the library, though it is likely he could have fabricated such a reason if asked; he had merely fallen into the habit of concealing books from Strange, and did not like to change his habits.

Mr Strange regarded Mr Norrell with intense scepticism.

"More tea?" Mr Norrell offered.

After breakfast, Mr Strange adjourned to the library, while Mr Norrell went in search of the Tabraham document. (In reality, he knew exactly where the document was located; however, he felt obliged to pretend he did not, so that Mr Strange would not begin to suspect that there might be other books which Mr Norrell was hiding— a suspicion that would, of course, have been very well-founded.)

The afternoon that ensued, when he returned with the manuscript, was one of the most pleasant and productive that Mr Norrell could recall experiencing since the days of Strange's apprenticeship. True: it was perhaps not so creatively fruitful as his lively discussions with Mr Strange tended to be. Yet how useful to be able to discourse on a theme without interruption! How very peaceful the library, without the punctuation of Mr Strange's sighs and occasional mumbles, without his distracted hums and his idle whistling! Mr Norrell lost himself in long musings upon the magical significance of voices, and what might be inferred about a fairy spirit who wished to acquire them, and why such a spirit might particularly wish to acquire the voice of Mr Strange.

He glanced over in the midst of this train of thought and observed Mr Strange frowning in intense concentration at a very poor map of Faerie. Mr Strange was swinging a pen back and forth between his fingers, and did not appear aware that Mr Norrell was looking at him. This caused Mr Norrell a peculiar, warm kind of feeling. He did not know how to categorize it, and, as a consequence, he was made uncomfortable.

"I have been thinking," said Mr Norrell hurriedly.

Mr Strange raised an eyebrow at him, quizzical.

"I have been thinking," Mr Norrell said again, "that perhaps your encounter with the lady was not so very coincidental as it may have seemed. She spoke, did she not, of the value of English magicians? I dare say we are quite well known, even in Faerie. I dare say we have made enemies. They would know, surely, that I would not fall prey to such a ploy. Perhaps they employ you, Mr Strange, as a means of entrapping me!" The further he followed this line of logic, the more likely such a prospect seemed. "It may be that they wish us to do exactly as we are doing. They may wish us to engage them! They will use you to lure me out so they may strike at me. Surely it would be wiser to—"

He stopped, for Mr Strange had pounded his hand on the table. The suddenness of the noise thus produced, in such an atmosphere of silence, was altogether a shock to the nerves. Mr Norrell supposed it was possible that Mr Strange had attempted to secure his notice by some other, less startling means, and that he, Mr Norrell, had not been very attentive.

Mr Strange was wearing a look of intense frustration. He made an emphatic gesture with his hand, one which Mr Norrell did not find very legible.

"I'm afraid I cannot understand you, Mr Strange," he said— to Strange's evident vexation. "You will have to write it down."

Mr Strange searched the table for paper and pen. He scribbled on the paper, _You're not leaving me like this._

"No, of course not; certainly. Though perhaps it might be wise to wait before we go gallivanting about—"

Strange underlined the words three time on the page. Upon further consideration, he added: _If someone wished to entrap you they would not use me as bait._

Mr Norrell did not quite understand this sentence. Strange's sardonic face seemed to suggest it was hurtful, but Mr Norrell was not sure to whom, or in what way.

His face must have displayed his incomprehension, for before he could utter anything, Strange kicked the leg of the table with a kind of disgust and sent the map spinning across the tabletop, stood, and left the library.

* * *

That night, a storm of bad dreams swept through the Pillar of Darkness. Mr Norrell dreamed that all the books in his library had been turned once more into ravens. They flew about the room, perching on ledges and chair-backs, eyeing him disdainfully. There was one that he most desired to catch, for it was a book he had not read yet. He could not recall the name of it, but he knew that it would contain a spell for which he had been searching. Possibly it would contain the spell for which he had been searching all of his life. When at last he clasped his hands about it, he felt it move under his fingers. He was unprepared for it to have muscles and bones. He had not thought of it as a living creature, with a heart that beat and wings that twitched. So startled was he, indeed almost repelled, that he could not bring himself to hold it. He dropped it, but it did not take flight. It struck the stone floor. In the dream, he understood that it was dead, and that even if it changed back into a book, it would never contain the spell that he longed for again.

In another dream, he found that the library was full of books that he had never read, and when he opened them up he found that they were all accounts of things he had done that he regretted. Lady Pole was there, and his behaviour with Mr Strange's book, and all the missions upon which he had sent Childermass, and indeed a great deal of his actions with regard to Childermass, and his friendships with Drawlight and Lascelles— Lascelles was pictured in a colour plate, holding a fruit knife that had dark blood dripping from its blade.

Mr Norrell's first thought was that he must not let Mr Strange read these books. But he saw that Mr Strange was in the library already, and that he was just closing one of the books. Mr Strange looked at Mr Norrell with a contemptuous and ironical expression, and opened his mouth to speak—

Mr Norrell woke. He was in his own safe bedroom, and a little magical light was burning. It was the same light he set out every night against the Darkness. His heart slowed as he considered that his library was safe, and that it was not, after all, filled with books of his misdeeds, and that there had never been such a book as the one with the spell he imagined.

When some moments had passed, he left his bed and, attiring himself in his dressing gown and cap, padded downstairs. One could not be too certain of one's library. The dreams had possessed such a vividness, such a clear sense of veracity. This was characteristic of magical dreams— and, indeed, magicians struggled with the problem of crafting dreams sufficiently unreal that they might be mistaken by the sleeper for natural dreams— but it left Mr Norrell with a distinct sense of unease.

This uneasiness was not helped by his discovery, upon reaching the library, that it was already occupied by Mr Strange. Mr Strange was not, however, reading a book of Mr Norrell's indiscretions and regarding him contemptuously. He was walking back and forth across the library floor, much in the nature of a man pacing a cell.

"Mr Strange?" said Mr Norrell in surprize. "What are you doing here?"

He had forgotten that Mr Strange was unable to speak.

Mr Strange raised his head. His face was very weary, and his eyes had acquired the low blue shadows which are characteristic of lack of sleep. He stumbled over to a table and wrote, at the top of a piece of paper he found there: _I do not wish to fall asleep._ He pointed to the paper and resumed his pacing. Mr Norrell could only assume the action was meant to protect him against drowsing, perhaps in the belief that if Mr Strange were to fall asleep, the impact of falling would most certainly wake him.

"You will do yourself an injury, sir," Mr Norrell told him. "Is it the dreams?"

Mr Strange nodded. He did not pause in his walking.

The uncomfortable thought came to Mr Norrell that Mr Strange, should he find himself trapped in a dream he did not care for, was now quite unable to wake himself with a scream, or call for someone to come to his aid, should he be very frightened. Mr Norrell had not ever in fact come to Mr Strange's aid in the event of an ill dream, nor could he easily imagine himself doing so. However, this did not alter the distress with which he regarded the idea of Mr Strange not being able to call for him.

He stepped forward and caught Mr Strange's arm. "You should sleep, Mr Strange. You do yourself no good by this behavior. I will—" he offered rather awkwardly, "stay with you, if that would be of use? Perhaps there is some magic I may employ, to counter the storm."

Strange stared at him. He did not seem to wholly comprehend for a moment.

"Sleep," Mr Norrell urged him. "Sleep."

He convinced Mr Strange to seat himself at a library table and rest his head on his folded hands. The very instant his eyes closed, he was asleep. Mr Norrell watched him anxiously. His own nightmares, he thought, had not been so terrible. It was not a violent storm, as some dream-storms could be. 10 Yet he did not like to think of Mr Strange being disturbed. It felt, in some way, like a violation. It made him wish to check all the locks on the library windows, reset his labyrinth, ensure that his books were still hidden. None of these precautions, however, would be effective in the slightest.

He considered what might be effective. There was a spell of aegis; however, he quickly discarded this, since he did not think such a spell would prove wholly effective against so phantom a danger as a dream. De Marston's Restoration of Flown Tranquillity might restore calm, but not remove nightmares. Nightmares were too close to madness, was the simple truth of the matter. Like madness, they were so intimately entwined with the self that it was very odd and very difficult to target them.

At last Mr Norrell thought of what seemed a practical solution. He reached out his hand and laid it upon Mr Strange's arm. He recited Pevensey's Form of Thine Own Reflection. His eyes closed, and in a moment he could see Strange's dream.

He was in a house he recognized as Mr Strange's house of Ashfair. It was, he thought, a slightly different version of Ashfair— a little older or a little darker, larger and more spare. Somewhere in the house, a child was crying. There was something peculiar about this sound, however, in that Mr Norrell could not ascertain from precisely what direction the sound seemed to originate. No matter where he walked in the house, the sound grew neither louder nor softer. He could not say if it were closer or farther away.

The house seemed to grow even larger and darker around him. It moved with very cold currents of air that came from nowhere and vanished as strangely. A sense of foreboding grew in him, a sense that the house itself was pressing against him, and that if he stayed here too long, it would suffocate him.

He had expected to find Strange in the dream, but did not see him anywhere. He had almost given up looking when a hand darted out from under a dining table and seized his ankle. Mr Norrell let out a small nervous shriek. Then he saw that the hand belonged to Strange, who was hiding under the table. Strange looked terrible. His face was white and his eyes were frightened.

"Shh," he said. "You have to hide."

"Hide from whom?" Norrell asked him. He wished that Strange would release his leg, for his hand was clammy and trembling slightly.

"Jonathan," Strange whispered. "Please don't let him find me!"

This was not a reply that put Mr Norrell much at ease. Indeed, he found it extremely disturbing. The atmosphere in the house became twice as foreboding as before. He said very hurriedly, "Mr Strange, it is only a nightmare. You must stop dreaming it." Upon saying this, he did what he had intended to do, which was to take Mr Strange's hand and lead him into another dream.

This dream seemed at first much more comfortable, as it took place in his own library at Hurtfew. However, it contained a second Mr Norrell, which was not comfortable for the original Mr Norrell at all. Furthermore, this second Mr Norrell did not appear to be a pleasant sort of person. He was pacing back and forth in the most severe manner, berating the hapless Mr Strange, who appeared very distressed.

"I'm afraid I shall have to bring a lawsuit against you," said the second Mr Norrell, "to reclaim the time and effort I have invested in your friendship."

"But I cannot give them back!" protested Mr Strange. "If you please— I do not know how to do so!"

The second Mr Norrell eyed him coldly. "And what good does that do me, sir? You are a drain on my resources! You continue to occupy space in my library; even now I must speak to you, converse and so forth... What recompense do you offer?"

"But I don't know!" Mr Strange was visibly near tears, which was a very uncharacteristic state for him to be in. "I do not know how to not occupy space! If you would only tell me— !"

"No," said the second Mr Norrell, "I'm afraid it must be the courts, since I have been told that I may not make you simply vanish. Bailiff! Magistrate!" He rang a bell, and there were heavy footsteps in the distance.

Mr Norrell seized the moment to draw attention to himself. He stepped forwards and caught Mr Strange's hand. "If you will come with me, Mr Strange," he said briskly, and pulled Mr Strange out of the dream.

The next dream, Mr Norrell thought, was possibly connected to Strange's madness. There did not seem to be much sense in it— only a great many wild streaks of colour, some of which were exactly the shade of his own unhappiness, and some of which were precisely the colour he had been before Waterloo, when he realized how very alone it made him to be a magician— except it was Strange who had been at Waterloo, and he was not Strange, and also he was not Jonathan, who was another person entirely. The colours all corresponded to highly specific experiences belonging to the various people he was, and none of these was an experience he particularly wished to relive. At several points he also thought that the streets were made of water, and that the water was made of grey hands that reached up for him. He sat and argued with the grey hands for a time about whether he ought to go under the water. Several of the grey hands thought he ought to, but some of the others felt he was not mad enough yet, and one of them spoke to him in Arabella's voice, and sang him lullabies, and wanted him to go home and drink a cup of tea and rest, which he felt certain was a trick of some kind.

The overall effect was to make Mr Norrell feel intensely nauseated. He had great trouble in determining how to take ahold of Strange's hand in this dream, and eventually he simply seized what he thought was the whole ensemble of persons and pulled them forwards.

In this dream, Strange was curled up in a small dark room, weeping. He was surrounded by a large number of unlit candles, which appeared partially melted, as though they had previously been lit. He was holding one such candle as though it were the most precious thing in the world.

"I did not mean to blow it out!" he said tearfully. "Please, you must tell me how it may be lit again! Please!"

"Can you not strike a flint?" asked Mr Norrell, puzzled. He did not understand why Mr Strange should feel so strongly about candles.

"No— no!" Mr Strange said. He wrenched at his hair with one hand. He seemed in the greatest distress. "I cannot! I think— there is only one way, but I do not wish to do it!"

With that, he wrenched the front of his head open, revealing an empty black space within, at the very back of which a small candle was burning.

So horrified was Mr Norrell by this that he heaved Mr Strange out of the dream more forcefully than he ought to have done, so forcefully that they both woke with a start, back in the library at Hurtfew.

Mr Strange rocked back in his chair, breathing as though he had just been drowning. He shoved himself away from the library table and pointed at Mr Norrell with a furious hand.

Mr Norrell did not understand why Mr Strange appeared so upset. "I was attempting to do you a kindness!" he said. "It is better that you sleep!"

Mr Strange swept his arm across the library table, knocking a great many papers and inkwells and books to the floor. The noise that resulted was very loud, and very startling given Mr Strange's silence. Mr Norrell leapt a little at it. His nerves were very disturbed. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest.

"Please, Mr Strange, you must calm yourself," he said. "This behaviour is very upsetting. I do not care for it at all."

Mr Strange levelled a look of astonishing scorn and disgust at him, slammed the chair against the table, and left the room. The faint scent of candle-smoke lingered, very much as though it had leaked from Strange's dreams. It turned Mr Norrell's stomach, and he felt he could not stay in the library either. But when he thought of the places he might escape to, he could see no prospect of relief in any of them.

* * *

Over the course of the next few days, Mr Norrell expended a quite uncharacteristic amount of effort in attempting to remedy his relations with Mr Strange. This is not to say that he made any very great attempt to apologize to Mr Strange, or to further explain his reasoning, or indeed to speak to Mr Strange at all. Rather, he began meekly to leave cups of tea in various locations where he thought Mr Strange might find himself, often accompanied by one of the small shortbread cookies that Mr Strange had purchased in the Lost Lance Corporal's Night Market11 — cookies that were flavoured with seven kinds of fascination, and which Mr Norrell had so particularly enjoyed that he had secreted a great many of them in a sewing tin and then evidenced the greatest bafflement when Mr Strange had enquired after where they had got to.   
  
Mr Norrell also sent a great many letters to various fairy lords in the hope that one of them might be persuaded to intervene in the matter of Mr Strange's stolen voice. Mr Norrell thought that nothing offered such a likelihood of reconciling Mr Strange to him as his success in this area, and though he did not believe that any of the fairy lords in question would feel much moved by Mr Strange's plight, or much interested in the fate of two English magicians, he considered that they might see some benefit to themselves in the matter— this being, aside from the prospect of amusement, the chief motivator of all fairy actions.   
  
Since he had sent these letters in the usual fairy fashion— that is, by entrusting their delivery to small hailstorms, east winds, or bolts of lightning— he began receiving responses to them as soon as the second evening. This was before he had received any response from Mr Strange, who had pointedly avoided all of the cups of tea and cookies, and who beyond this seemed determined not to acknowledge Mr Norrell in any way. Mr Strange did not go so far as the eschew the Hurtfew library entirely, and indeed had embarked intently upon some private research. However, when addressed by Mr Norrell he would, at most, lift his head and direct a cool look of hostility at him before returning to his book as though he had not heard the question.  
  
"I do not think it is kind of you to behave so," said Mr Norrell at last, when he had endured one too many of these cool, hostile looks. "I am devoting considerable energy towards the restoration of your happiness, the loss of which was hardly my responsibility in the first place. Indeed, I have done nothing that is not aimed at your wellbeing, and yet you regard me as though I were a very great villain! It seems most unreasonable, sir!"  
  
Nothing in Mr Strange's countenance suggested that this outburst had been audible. Mr Norrell felt on the very brink of stamping his feet, or engaging in some other form of noise-producing behavior that would ordinarily have been quite atypical of him. However, at that moment, an east wind swept down the chimney, extinguishing a number of candles and causing a very small flower to sprout from the wooden table. The flower had leaves of parchment which, when it had fully bloomed, revealed themselves to be the folded corners of a letter.   
  
Mr Norrell plucked the letter impatiently. When he had unfolded it, he could see that it read as follows:  


_To the English Magician Trapped in the Darkness Who Still Possesses the Power of Speech:_  
  
_The King of the Pierced Palm and Pearls-for-Eyes thinks it very bold for an English magician to so address him without sending so much as a gift. The last time an English magician sought his aid, he presented the King with all his memories of coriander and, upon a second request, with the colour of his eldest daughter's hair. 12 It is possible that the King might be persuaded to hear your petition if you were to provide him with similarly handsome gifts. We shall await your reply._  
  
_Your humble servant,_  
  
_John Pennytheft_  
 _Steward_

  
  
"Well, that is not very promising," Mr Norrell said regretfully. "I do not think it wise to offer any gifts. I would go so far as to say it must be avoided. I suppose we must wait and see what the other fairy lords and ladies will say."  
  
Mr Strange did not offer any comment upon this— well, of course he did not; how could he— and merely bent his head lower over his book so that the only visible part of him was his very wild mess of uncombed curls. This, Mr Norrell observed, conveyed an impression of sulkiness.  
  
The next letter arrived in a bolt of lightning and singed the table slightly when it appeared. The edges of it were curling and blackened, and Mr Norrell burnt his fingertips opening it. This put him into a very bad temper, which did not improve when he read the letter's contents.  


_Dear Sir:_  [presumably the lightning had possessed a more specific address]  
  
_I should count myself most intrigued to enter into a contract of industry with you. You are indeed correct that I am a very great sorcerer with an unmatched number of allegiances, and I find I have quite an appetite to subdue someone at the moment. Your enemy might do very well. Your offer, however, is a little confusing, as you have omitted the very trifling concern of what I am to receive from such an alliance. Perhaps you mean to imply that I may keep your colleague's voice. I do concede that I would be a most excellent caretaker for it. I cannot see, otherwise, why I should bestir myself._  
  
_You may send your clarification by care of the east wind._  
  
_The Lord of the Western Confluence of Sorrows_

  
  
Mr Norrell sighed. "He has quite misunderstood me," he said. "It is shocking what greedy creatures these fairies are. They will not lift a finger if they can spy no benefit in it to them! They lack the compassionate virtues; they are spoilt and selfish—"  
  
This proved to be the comment which provoked a response from Mr Strange, who raised an eloquent eyebrow and stared at Mr Norrell pointedly. Mr Norrell did not quite understand the import of this expression, but he had a sense that Strange meant something offensive by it.   
  
Irritated, Mr Norrell tossed the charred letter into the fire, where it exploded into bluish flames that smelt of cloves and stone and stagnant water. "Well," he said stiffly, "I shall leave you to your researches, since it is plain you have no use for my company."  
  
Perhaps he imagined the faint look of contrition that seemed to cross Strange's face. He was almost certain that he did. It was not his experience on the whole that Mr Strange was much given to contrition.  
  
This being the case, Mr Norrell adjourned to his bedroom in the Hanover-square house, where he somewhat ameliorated his mood by making a census of all the books he had hidden in the lined trunk below the window, and then by eating a great number of the fascination-flavoured shortbreads. After a time, this made him feel slightly ill. Or perhaps he felt ill because quarreling with Strange often had this effect. It gave him headaches and strange pains. He was certain that his weak nerves were to blame for this, and he was rather of the opinion that Strange ought to accommodate his sensitivities by arranging not to quarrel with him. Childermass had always been so very good about this, and Mr Norrell felt that if a servant could accomplish the task, it ought not be so very difficult for a gentleman.  
  
He sat at his writing desk in a nightcap, contemplating the matter. A few moments passed. He frowned and blinked, for it had come to him that his contemplations were very much disturbed by the sound of hail pecking against his window.   
  
With a sense of apprehension, he opened the window. A shower of hailstones tumbled in. These were not ordinary hailstones, which is to say: they were not made of ice, but rather of variably identifiable other substances, such as sunlight, seawater, mourning, and indolence. One of the hailstones dissolved as soon as Mr Norrell touched it, leaving behind a damp letter and a residue of regret.   
  
Mr Norrell unfolded the letter with an expression of distaste at the clammy feel of its page. It read:   
  
_To the Less Accursed English Magician:_  
  
_My lord the Saint of Last-breaths receives your query with the greatest interest and invites you to present your petition at his court in the hour that you would find most convenient. You will be pleased to bring your accursed companion and wear no red garments._  
  
_William Sinner_  
 _Lord Chamberlain of the Left Hand_  
 _Last-breaths_  
  
  
This response was certainly more encouraging than any of the others, and Mr Norrell allowed himself to feel briefly cheered. However, there was a certain imperious tone to it that did not comfort him greatly, and he noted that the letter allowed no possibility of his (or Mr Strange's) refusal. Still— it was progress! There could be no denying that it was progress!   
  
Mr Norrell considered descending to the library to inform Mr Strange about this letter; the thought of this, though, caused him to feel newly queasy. What if Mr Strange should object to the proposal? What if Mr Strange should look at him in a pointed way that seemed to belittle all of his efforts, and that furthermore seemed subtly to say,  _You have failed to execute your responsibilities towards me?_  
  
No, he thought in an unnerving moment of insight. That was not what the look seemed to say. What, after all, were his responsibilities towards Mr Strange? There were not so very many of them. But:  _You have failed to care for me,_  said the look at a very much more basic level.  _You have failed to protect me._

 

* * *

 

9 Edward Tabraham, c. 1180-1215, was a minor Aureate magician whose lasting notability is due both to the document Mr. Norrell describes and to his mysterious disappearance in 1215, which is described in numerous records of the time. There was a strong suspicion amongst the English authorities at the time that Tabraham, who was a resident of London, and thus not a subject of the Black King, had been stolen away to Newcastle by John Uskglass. It is unclear why the English suspected this might be the case, or whether, if it was the case, the disappearance were a consensual one. 

10 One particularly violent dream-storm had laid waste to the city of Seven, in what fairies accounted the Year That Thirteen Swans Dreamt a Prophecy of A Bridge Upon the Three Rivers of Death. 

11 The Lost Lance Corporal's Night Market was a continuous bazaar that took place in the fairy hundred of Blood-Well. The lost lance corporal to whom its name refers had been an English soldier who, in 1547, was presumed drowned in the River Esk during the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh. In fact, the soldier did not drown, but seems to have somehow passed through the river-bottom into Blood-Well. The fairy residents of this hundred, where no Christian had been seen for more than a hundred years, were charmed and delighted by him and made of him something of a pet. They held the bazaar to celebrate the anniversary of his arrival, but in typical fairy fashion were not very certain of when this had been, and thus concluded that it was best to simply keep it ongoing. By the time of Mr Strange and Mr Norrell's visit in 1819, the entire affair had become more or less detached from its origins. Indeed, the fairies were no longer quite sure if the lance corporal were still present, although, they said, they assumed him to be, since they had left him chained to some tree or another wearing a most cunning ruby collar. They could not recall exactly in which year this had been.  
  
12 It would appear by this reference that the English magician to whom the letter refers was Henry Tremethick (1502-1545), a little-known Argentine magician who made a number of unsatisfactory deals with fairies, one of which ultimately led to his disappearance and presumed death. In 1539, Tremethick was brought before the Petty Dragownes by his son-in-law, Francis Worsley, on the charge that he (Tremethick) had cursed his eldest daughter, Anne (Worsley's wife). Anne's hair, previously of a handsome chestnut colour, now appeared to have no colour at all, which was very distressing to the lady and had caused her a great loss of reputation. Worsley was successful in his suit; however, Tremethick proved unable to restore the colour of Anne's hair, and was ultimately ordered to remunerate her in the sum of £100. This, so far as we can ascertain, he failed to ever do. 


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning, Mr Norrell woke especially early and prepared a breakfast of which he felt very proud. It included a pot of steaming tea, several crisp slices of toast neatly placed in a rack, a little jar of marmalade, the last of the shortbreads, and a decorative orchid-flower that he had created out of a tea-spoon.   
  
When Mr Strange arrived, he eyed the breakfast table with a look of profound suspicion. He did not sit, but turned to gaze at Mr Norrell. After Mr Norrell failed to immediately interpret his expression— or rather failed to answer it adequately, as Mr Norrell was reasonably certain that the expression was meant to enquire what new and objectionable circumstance Mr Norrell was about to inflict upon Strange— he produced a notebook and an ink pen and wrote in large letters:  _WHAT HAVE YOU DONE._  
  
"I have done nothing," Mr Norrell protested. "Why are you so very untrusting? Why must you insist on thinking so ill of me?"  
  
Mr Strange looked even more suspicious.  _Have you contrived to become enchanted?_  he wrote.  _Have you placed yourself under some form of spell?_  
  
Mr Norrell was content, here, to let his expression speak for him. He said, "I am not under any spell. I merely thought you might appreciate..." He abandoned this sentence. "I have had a reply from a fairy lord who extends some possibility of assistance. We will have to attend his court. It is not a very great ways away. I am certain there will be no difficulties about it." He smiled in a faintly desperate manner that was intended to conceal his own uncertainties.  
  
Mr Strange continued to appear dubious. However, he consented to take a seat at the breakfast table, and began spreading marmalade on a piece of toast. His eyes flickered to Mr Norrell now and again as though he were not quite convinced that Mr Norrell was not enchanted after all, or attempting to trick him into something unpleasant. After a time, he seemed to forget this lingering suspicion, and became extremely concerned, instead, with demonstrating to Mr Norrell the inadequacies of his understanding of fairy geography— which, Mr Strange argued through a great deal of energetic writing, was not fixed at all, but rather constantly shifting. Its nature, Mr Strange proposed, was akin to river water.  
  
Mr Norrell did not mind the disagreement. In fact it was most enjoyable to him. This type of quarrel produced exactly the opposite effect from the majority of his quarrels with Mr Strange, and by the time it occurred to him that they really ought to set off for the castle of Last-breaths, he and Mr Strange had quarreled through two pots of tea, an inkwell, and a quantity of water that Mr Strange had poured into a champagne-server to prove a point. 13    
  
So it was in relative peace that they set out for Last-breaths, and indeed the argument continued a good ways into their journey, as Mr Strange drew Mr Norrell's attention to various peculiarities of Faerie and the way that the King's Roads moved through it.   
  
When at last they came to the castle, it seemed a very typical fairy dwelling, which is to say that to the eyes of men, it appeared both horribly bleak and at the same time unaccountably seductive. It was dirty and hung about with tattered shrouds and cobwebs, yet Mr Norrell— who under most circumstances would have shuddered and refused to enter any room that showed even a drift of pollen that he had mistaken for a cobweb— was drawn to it powerfully. It seemed to offer the promise of some important feeling that he had never experienced, yet which was all the same familiar to him as something he had once lost and wanted very badly to recover.   
  
When he looked over at Mr Strange, he saw that Mr Strange was also affected, for his face was a look of nearly insupportable suffering. It reminded Mr Norrell of what he had seen in Mr Strange's nightmares. He reached out and placed a hand on Mr Strange's sleeve.  
  
"It is all right, you know," he said awkwardly. "It is only the enchantment."  
  
Mr Strange nodded. Yes, of course he knew that. He did not move away, however. He only hesitated— and then, taking a finger, wrote in the air rather cryptically:  _I know that such a thing does not exist._  The letters stayed there for a moment, silver and glittering, before they dissolved themselves to nothing again.   
  
They walked on.  
  
The castle, it seemed, had been prepared for their coming, for no sooner had they drawn close to it than a pair of great doors swung open. Beyond them, torchlight flickered, inviting them in, and the air was filled with shivers of scent and music. The scent was a sort of dark amber, not out of place in the forest, and the music involved a great deal of droning and wailing. It did not seem to be an atmosphere that would much appeal to Mr Norrell. Nevertheless, he went in.  
  
The Saint14 of Last-breaths was seated on a throne made of columbines. He had drooping ringlets of lily-white hair, and eyes the colour of springtime violets. These eyes were very droopy; he appeared almost to be sleeping. When he saw Mr Strange and Mr Norrell hesitating at the door of his hall, however, he said in a very loud bored voice, "William Sinner! Tell the magicians to approach me!"  
  
Another man, this one who might almost have appeared English were it not for his very long, strange eyebrows and his very sharp fingernails, beckoned to Norrell and Strange in an imperious manner. He, too, seemed very bored by them. He was seated at a little gaming table with a masked lady, playing some sort of complicated game that involved the exchange of many small rocks and feathers. After a moment, Mr Norrell saw that the lady was not masked, as he had first thought, but rather possessed the face of a white-shouldered ibis, with two fierce eyes and a slender, tapering beak. This did not make him feel very comfortable at all.   
  
"The English magicians," William Sinner said in an absent-minded way. He cast a feather at the ibis-faced lady. "They want something, but I cannot recall what it is."  
  
"We wish—" started Mr Norrell, and then thought that perhaps he should not have spoken. The Saint of Last-breaths' eyes settled on him, and they were so very violet and so very overpowering that Mr Norrell slightly quailed. After a moment, however, he regained himself. "We wish to know if you would perhaps see fit to restore Mr Strange's voice, which has been taken from him by in a most illicit fashion."  
  
"Oh, yes," William Sinner said without looking up from his game. "Now I recall. That was it."  
  
The Saint of Last-breaths beckoned. But when Mr Norrell stepped forward, he said dismissively, "No. Not you."  
  
Mr Norrell did not quite like the idea of Mr Strange going forwards alone. But he held his tongue and watched as Mr Strange approached the dais. The columbines of which the throne was made seemed to tilt towards him slightly, opening and closing their petals as though breathing curiously.  
  
The Saint of Last-breaths extended his hand. "Closer," he demanded. "Come closer."  
  
Mr Strange obeyed a little hesitantly, though something in his posture suggested he very much took umbrage at being commanded in such a way. He stopped only when the Saint of Last-breaths' hand rested on his shoulder. Mr Strange looked at this hand with mild distaste.   
  
The Saint of Last-breaths plucked at the cloth of Mr Strange's coat, then took his jaw firmly in one hand and tilted his head from side to side, very much in the manner of a man inspecting a prize racehorse. "Ah, yes," he said. "I can see the defect quite plainly. You will forgive me if at first I missed it, for there is such a charming scent of madness upon him as well. I was quite distracted."   
  
Strange looked as though he would like to make a cutting reply to this, but could not. Mr Norrell wished that the fairy king would remove his hand; he did not like to see Mr Strange's look of suppressed temper. He did not, either, like to see Mr Strange treated as an object; he noted that the Saint of Last-breaths had not deigned to address Mr Strange directly.  
  
"He was once mad," said Mr Norrell. "He is not any longer. I only wish to know if you can repair the defect. The lady who took his voice had no right to do so; you would be repairing an injustice."  
  
The Saint of Last-breaths released Mr Strange's face. "Oh, yes, I could repair it," he said indifferently. "The person you mention is very trifling. I have no feud with her, but I suppose I would enjoy one. She has a collection of more than eight thousand individual voices, and if I killed her, I could claim them as my own. That would be most entertaining. I could speak in the voice of a little Christian child if I wished to, or an ancient berserker. I would find that very amusing. But it would not be a favour to you. He is such a rare thing like this! An English magician who cannot speak! I am half of a mind to purchase him from you. He would make a delightful addition to my own court."  
  
"I cannot sell Mr Strange!" said Mr Norrell, appalled. "I do not own him!"  
  
"I do not see what that has to do with it." The fairy's bemusement seemed, unfortunately, sincere. "If you are set upon retaining him, I quite understand. But surely his value would diminish if I gave him his voice. Or perhaps you would prefer to replace that defect with another? That would work very well. Since you are attached to his voice. I would return that, and then take in exchange his laughter, or his ear for music, or any other sort of thing. Perhaps you could choose one which particularly displeases you." He smiled encouragingly and in a faintly patronising manner.   
  
Mr Norrell looked at Mr Strange.   
  
Mr Strange looked at Mr Norrell.  
  
It was clear to each of them in that moment, Mr Norrell imagined, what the other was thinking about. There were, of course, many aspects of Mr Strange that particularly displeased Mr Norrell. Mr Strange was loud. He was ironical. He was not fastidious. He left fingerprints on the pages of books. He had a great number of wrong ideas. He was very conceited. He was given to absurd and emotional displays— just look at the manner in which he had lost his voice!   
  
Mr Norrell was aware, furthermore, that the removal of many of these aspects would do little harm to Mr Strange. What did it matter if Mr Strange could not leave fingerprints? Would it be such a terrible fate for him to turn a little more fastidious? A little more careful? It would be an improvement, surely!  
  
"You would simply remove the trait in question," asked Mr Norrell, "and restore his voice in its place?"  
  
The Saint of Last-breaths looked impatient. "Yes, yes. You would have to allow me perhaps an hour to go and kill the lady— more if she has any wretched offspring or kin, for then I must kill all of them as well."  
  
Mr Norrell looked at Mr Strange again. He had not asked Mr Strange the question that Strange seemed poised to answer. He felt, in some obscure way, that it was important he not ask it.   
  
Instead he said, "There is no part of Mr Strange that I would give you. Unless Mr Strange himself should desire such a thing... ?"  
  
A look of astonishment crossed Mr Strange's face. He raised his eyebrows as though to suggest that surely there had been some mistake, and that if Mr Norrell reconsidered, he would find himself ready to relinquish many parts of Mr Strange. When a moment passed, and no such reconsideration occurred, he simply looked rather puzzled. He shook his head slightly:  _No._  
  
"Well," said the Saint of Last-breaths, "in that case, I cannot see that we can do very much for each other."  
  
"It would seem not," Mr Norrell said.  
  
"Do not fear that I shall take any revenge on you for the matter; it seems most likely that you shall need my aid in the future, and I will certainly profit by it. And perhaps I shall go and kill the river-spirit at any rate. I am in the mood to kill somebody. Then you should have to appeal to me for what you want. I shall look forward to seeing you and your apprentice then."  
  
"He is not my apprentice," said Mr Norrell. But he did not know how to say what, in that case, Mr Strange was to him, so he merely bowed after that and enumerated how grateful he was for the attention, and all of the other things that visitors to courts are meant to say.  
  
Later, when they had left the castle and were traveling through Faerie, he said rather abruptly to Mr Strange, "I do not feel he meant anything very honest by it, you know. It is likely that he would have attempted to trick us. And you have already proven so very uncareful; who knows what damage you might have done in that case? No; it would have been most unwise. Most unwise."  
  
Mr Strange put his hand on Mr Norrell's shoulder. He did not say anything.

* * *

 

That night, Mr Strange and Mr Norrell played chess for the first time in several weeks. Chess was one of the few activities— apart from magic, which was after all their profession— that they had discovered themselves to both enjoy. This common enjoyment had come as something of a surprize: on Mr Norrell's part, because he could not imagine Mr Strange having the patience for such a game, and on Mr Strange's, because he associated the game so strongly with his military friends and the art of war. Nevertheless, they had discovered that so long as Mr Norrell was not allowed to draw out his turn for more than twenty minutes, and so long as Mr Strange was kept from distracting himself with magical books they could pass several hours peacefully at such entertainment.   
  
On this particular night, they were both somewhat weary from their journeys through Faerie, and it was not entirely a surprise when, towards the end of the game Mr Norrell looked up to find Mr Strange sleeping. He was seated close to the fire, and he looked very peaceful. Mr Norrell watched him for a moment, feeling very fond. After a moment, he went and fetched a blanket and draped it over Mr Strange's knees.  
  
As he straightened, he caught a flash of movement behind him. He turned, very startled, to see that there was a man in the library. He was not a man whom Mr Norrell recognized, but all the same it seemed perfectly natural that he be there. It was as though he had always been there, just as he was now: slight and black-haired, with a somewhat arrogant bearing, examining the spines of a shelf of books.  
  
"Oh!" said Mr Norrell. "It is you!"  
  
The man turned and regarded him. "Yes," he agreed. "Well; it is part of me, for I do not chuse to stay forever in darkness."  
  
"Ah," Mr Norrell said. He thought:  _Of course! He is an English magician, and it would not be wise for him to come here. In fact he is a very great English magician, is he not?_  But he found he could not quite follow these thoughts. "I would beg of you to remain quiet," he said, "for Mr Strange is sleeping just now."  
  
"You need not worry," said the man. "He will not wake. I have come to give you something that belongs to him." He reached a hand into the pocket of his stylish black coat and removed a little crystal jar. Inside it was a substance that was tart and green and tawny, a little like velvet and a little like candlelight and a little like Seville oranges.   
  
"It is Mr Strange's voice," said Mr Norrell as he took the jar. He could perceive this as soon as he took hold of it. He thought there was no voice in the world that he knew so well; it was impossible for him to be mistaken.  
  
"He must learn to be more careful with it," the man said. "Nevertheless, I will not suffer any-which spirit to defy me and believe that my subjects are licit prey. They are not; and this will serve as a reminder."  
  
"Thank you," said Mr Norrell, though he felt rather confused. "Shall I just... ?" He gestured with the jar towards Mr Strange.  
  
"Open it," said the man.  
  
Mr Norrell did so. For a moment, he had the distinct impression that he had only just heard Mr Strange speak— as though he had paused in the middle of a sentence, perhaps, while searching for words or distracted by some stray idea. There was a brief scent of smoke and magic. Apart from this, nothing changed.  
  
"It is done," said the man. Then he tilted his head and fixed upon Mr Norrell a most penetrating gaze. "The spell you dreamt of," he said, "is not lost. But no one else can teach it to you."   
  
Then he turned and slipped out of the library through a little crack in the shadows, and in scarcely a moment it was as though he had never been there at all.  


* * *

In the morning, Mr Norrell laid out the breakfast things on the table. He had not transfigured the decorative orchid-flower back into a teaspoon; he found that he was rather fond of it, even when he was not employing it in order to win Mr Strange's forgiveness.  
  
Humming quietly to himself, he unscrewed the lid from the marmalade and brewed a full pot of tea. They would need more bread soon, he noted. Perhaps— perhaps he would go to fetch it this time. He felt a certain reluctance about sending Strange. Or, he thought, perhaps they would go together. Go together properly. Strange could ensure they did not encounter any mice or spiders or any other type of dirty thing, and Mr Norrell would keep Strange from danger.   
  
A floorboard creaked. Mr Norrell looked up and saw Mr Strange in the doorway. His hair was rumpled and his face was marked with sleep, but he exuded a sense of barely suppressed joy. He looked childlike, Norrell thought— childlike, not childish; as though it were not too late for him still to learn all that the world had failed to teach him, nor too late to remedy those defects of making that lead us into our mistakes. At the same time he seemed to have no defects at all. Mr Norrell, who had never had any children, nor really been a child as one imagines children, felt that he was peering for the first time into the heart of some logic that had always seemed paradoxical to him. It was paradoxical, he saw, but that was its nature; and it ought not, on account of that nature, to be reckoned any less complete. He could not have explained this to anyone, and indeed would never have tried to do so. Nevertheless, it so affected him that he absently stuck a fork into the sugar and a teaspoon into the marmalade, because he was looking at Mr Strange in a foolish, happy fashion.  
  
"Hello," said Mr Strange, who was smiling.  
  
"Hello," Mr Norrell said.

 

 

 

* * *

13 Neither Mr Strange nor Mr Norrell could quite remember where the champagne-server— which was vast and supported by the silver forms of four lions— had come from or why it might have been required at Hurtfew Abbey in the first place.  
  
14 Faerie contains several lords who title themselves "Saints"; this speaks not to any particular virtue in their character, nor indeed to any dalliance with Christianity, but rather to the impression received by many fairies that a saint was a kind of powerful magician much respected by Christians, whose right it was to receive offerings. This belief was the cause of a few fairy lords deciding, after encounters with Christians, to style themselves as saints in order to lay claim to this right and power.


End file.
